The weblog of Norman Geras

August 21, 2012

All booked up

Bob from Brockley has pointed the finger in this direction, laying on me the task of making two lists of books. The first is a list of novels read in my teens and early twenties, books that shaped or inspired me. I'm taking the age of 25 as my cut-off point here, and dumping 'shaped'. I don't know what novels, if any, shaped me. So the first list is simply of novels that had a big impact when I read them and which I've never forgotten; unlike the many books one reads that leave only a vague trace. This first list I found relatively easy to make.

The second list is of novels I've read as an (older) adult and loved - and it's impossible. I mean it's impossible given the limit I set myself of 15 books per list. There are just too many in this second category and consequently I have had to be quite arbitrary in my choices, putting together a sample, no more. One result of this has been that I've omitted from the second list some of my favourite writers - Henry James, Anthony Powell, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler, Richard Yates - through being unable to fix on the book of theirs I'd choose (another self-imposed rule being that no writer gets more than one title on a list).

Here, after all that, are the two lists. The books aren't ranked on either, but given in the chronological order in which I read them.